The world is at the point where internet users are generating zettabytes of data, and there’s a need for the infrastructure to handle such traffic.
With the introduction of 5G, the launch of more data-hungry applications, and the explosion of big data, data centers are becoming increasingly important.
That is why we scoured research, journals, surveys, original studies, and other vetted sources to compile the most intriguing and recent data center statistics.
Top 8 Data Center Statistics (Editor’s Pick)
- Europe had 1240+ data centers at the end of 2022.
- 1 in 5 Los Angeles data center square feet was vacant in H1 2022.
- True IDC accounted for 20% of the Hong Kong data center market in Q1 2022.
- China boasted 10% of the global data center market share in 2021.
- The global data center market was valued at $220 billion by the end of 2021.
- The Asian data center market will amass $122 billion in revenue in 2023.
- The Australian data center market will be worth $6.04 billion by 2027.
- Kenya will realize $55 million from colocation data centers in 2027.
Infographic
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General Data Center Statistics
1. In H1 2022, Hong Kong’s data centers under construction would add a combined 348-megawatt power capacity on completion.
In the same period, Jakarta played house to combined 127MW data centers under construction, while Singapore’s totaled 165MW.
2. 57% of IT professionals voted “data center consolidation” in their top three measures to save costs in their organizations.
The IT pros in this survey claimed they would implement this strategy between 2021-2022.
3. 54% of surveyed IT pros in 2021 used on-premises data centers to host their workloads.
In contrast, 15% opted for a private cloud data center, while another 15% used the public cloud option.
4. Lower capital costs were among the top three considerations for off-premises data centers in 2021.
Nearly half (48%) of IT pros voted lower capital costs in second place, only behind disaster recovery concerns among 70% of the surveyed professionals.
In third place was improved security (43%) provided by colocation data center suppliers.
5. 240+ data centers were built to completion across Europe between 2017-2022.
These data centers also increased the existing power capacity in the market by 2230MW.
6. 31% of data center operators reported zero outages in the three years leading up to 2021.
Of the 69% who had outages, only 8% classified their most significant outage as severe. The larger percentage (30%) claimed that their most significant outage in those past three years had negligible impact on operations.
7. 61% of IT professionals in 2021 reported higher IT resilience from spreading their data center consumption models.
These professionals used a hybrid network of on-premise data centers, colocation data centers, and cloud options.
In contrast, 9% of IT professionals believed such hybrid solutions made their teams less resilient, while 30% did not have an answer.
8. A third of enterprise data center owners and operators reported a rapid increment in rack power densities between 2020-2022.
However, half of the surveyed respondents in this niche claimed a slow increment in rack power densities. Just 14% believed there was no change across the three years, as 3% claimed a decrease.
9. Fewer data center operators in 2022 (7%) refreshed their servers every 1-2 years.
In contrast, 9% did so in 2020 and as far back as 2015.
1 in 4 respondents in 2022 refreshed their servers every 3 years, and the breakdown for the rest is below.
| Refresh Rate | % of Data Centre Operators/Owners |
|---|---|
| 1-2 years | 7% |
| 3 years | 25% |
| 4 years | 15% |
| 5 years | 33% |
| More than 5 years | 19% |
10. 29% of data center equipment vendors in 2022 guaranteed timely supply only to prioritized customers.
Most (48%) claimed all their customers suffered equipment delivery delays, while only 23% could supply their demand to all customers in time.
Data Center Demography Statistics
11. China had the highest (447) data center stock in the Asian Pacific region in 2021.
Australia followed it, with 279 facilities, and Japan (207 facilities) in the top three.
12. As of 2021, India’s ready data centers were cumulatively rated 724MW and occupied 8 million square feet.
Its data centers under construction totaled 1073MW to be installed on 10 million square feet, while another 1803MW-capacity batch was in the works.
A further planned batch would occupy 14 million square feet on approval.
13. Europe had 1240+ data centers at the end of 2022.
These data centers were built on over 8.3 million square meters and were rated at around 8300MW power capacity.
14. There were over 300 active data center operators in Europe in 2022.
Most of these data centers were in Western Europe, where they consumed 76% of the total European data center power supply.
15. 22% of data centers in 2021 had no women on their design, build, or operations teams.
Only 5% reported having half (or more) of their teams made up of women.
Another 13% claimed 1 in 4 of such staff were women.
The full breakdown can be found in the table below.
| Share of Women in Build, Design, or Operations Staff | % of Organization |
|---|---|
| None | 22% |
| 1%-4% | 27% |
| Around 5% | 15% |
| Around 10% | 18% |
| About 25% | 13% |
| 50% or higher | 5% |
16. Northern Virginia led the US and the world in data center capacity under construction.
As of H1 2022, the data centers under construction in Northern Virginia would feature 1010MW in power capacity. This was almost 3x the same capacity under construction by H1 2021 when the combined power capacity was 339MW.
17. Phoenix, US, had the highest data center construction surge in H1 2022.
There were ZERO data centers under construction in Phoenix as of H1 2021.
But one year later, projects in the pipeline combined for a 278MW power capacity, making it the second after Northern Virginia.
18. Data-center-under-construction capacities dropped across major European markets in H1 2022.
For example, the data centers under construction in London, as of H1 2021, totaled 108.7MW in power capacity. One year later, the units under construction only accounted for 67.6MW.
Paris (114.9MW vs. 19MW) saw a more significant drop, while Frankfurt (117.8MW vs. 50.5MW) was not left out of the decline either.
19. Madrid (108.5MW) had the largest data centers (by power capacity) under construction in H1 2022.
Surprisingly, there were ZERO data centers under construction in Madrid just one year before (H1 2022). Likewise, this made Madrid home to the highest power capacity ratings for data centers under construction in the first half of 2022.
20. Tokyo led the APAC regions in data center construction in H1 2022, with 468.3MW-capable facilities under construction.
In second place was Sydney, almost down half of Tokyo’s figures at 250MW.
| Country | Data Centre Capacity (Under Construction) |
|---|---|
| Tokyo | 468.3MW |
| Sydney | 250MW |
| Hong Kong | 244MW |
| Mumbai | 79MW |
| Chennai | 21MW |
| Bangkok | 12MW |
21. By 2027, the Kenyan data center market should have a 31 MW power capacity.
The data centers contributing to this rating would span 147,000 square feet.
22. The North American market added an extra 352.9MW power capacity in H1 2022.
This represented a 10.5% increase in existing infrastructure.
Data Center Absorption Statistics
23. Phoenix, USA, had the highest (280MW) US data center absorption rate in H1 2022.
In contrast, only 26MW was absorbed in H1 2021, during which Northern Virginia (119MW) led the market and Phoenix came third, behind Northwest (27.8MW).
The top five data centers in the USA by absorption in H1 2022 are tabled below.
| Data Centre | Absorption |
|---|---|
| Phoenix | 280MW |
| North Virginia | 257MW |
| Northwest | 194MW |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 177MW |
| Chicago | 99MW |
24. London led EMEA data center absorptions in H1 2021 and H1 2022.
36.7MW data center capacity was absorbed in London in H1 2021, dropping to 35.4MW absorbed in H1 2022.
Conversely, EMEA regions like Paris (21MW vs. 26.8MW), Frankfurt (18.8MW vs. 21.6MW), Amsterdam (5.5MW vs. 8.1MW), and Madrid (0MW vs. 6.1MW) saw increased absorption over the two periods.
25. Mumbai (58MW) led the APAC region in net data center absorption in H1 2022.
This put it ahead of Tokyo (34MW) and Hong Kong (18MW), which comprised the top three.
26. North American data center absorption rates climbed over 453MW in H1 2022.
This led to a record-low 1.3% vacancy rate in Silicon Valley, one of the key markets in the region.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-absorption-rate-north-america.png" alt="Data Center Absorption Rates in North America" width="768" border="0" height="325.79489744872" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-absorption-rate-north-america-768x326.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-absorption-rate-north-america-300x127.png 300w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-absorption-rate-north-america-1024x434.png 1024w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-absorption-rate-north-america-1536x652.png 1536w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-absorption-rate-north-america.png 1999w" sizes="auto"></a>
27. Northern Virginia had the highest (269.3MW) net absorption in Northern America in H1 2022.
This was from an available 1908.1MW inventory in the reporting period.
Making up the top three (by net absorption) were Silicon Valley (56.2MW) and Phoenix (46.3MW).
28. Bangkok boasted a 147MW data center power capacity landscape in Q1 2022.
There was a 46MW live capacity and 11MW vacant supply during this period.
Market players also had 23MW-capable data centers under construction to increase the Bangkok market’s power capacity.
US Data Center Statistics
29. As of H1 2022, Atlanta’s data centers occupied over 2.5 million square feet and had a 338MW power capacity.
In the same period, an additional 1.13 million square feet were under construction, expected to add about 34MW power capacity. There were also plans for over 1.57 million square feet to introduce an additional 302MW capacity.
30. The average power rate in Atlantan data centers in H1 2022 was 4.7 cents per kilowatt hour.
In contrast, the cost was 4.3kWh in 2021, the same as in 2020.
Likewise, the H1 2022 cost matched 2018 and 2019 but was lower than the costs in 2016 and 2017 (4.8kWh apiece).
31. In Austin & San Antonio, data center supply inventories totaled 1.385 million square feet.
This was in H1 2022, when the total market capacity was 129.9MW.
No data centers were under construction in the period, but an additional 441,000 square feet (adding 86MW) was planned.
32. Boston’s data centers occupied 1.2 million square feet containing 160MW power capacity setups.
And as of H1 2022, 240,000 square feet, representing 25MW in power capacity, were vacant in Boston.
33. Boston's average data center power rate was 17.5 cents per kilowatt hour as of H1 2022.
Likewise, data center rental rates ranged from $85 to $300, depending on the rented capacity.
| Data Centre Power Capacity | Rental Costs |
|---|---|
| >250kW | $225-$300 |
| 250kW – 1MW | $110-$145 |
| 1-5MW | $95-130 |
| >5MW | $85-115 |
34. Chicago was home to almost 5.77 million square feet of data center establishments as of H1 2022.
However, 560,000 square feet were vacant at the time, while there were 141,000 additional square feet under construction.
In the future, Chicago planned to add another 351,000 square feet, increasing its existing data center power capacity by 70.3MW.
35. Over 239,000 data center square feet in Dallas/Fort Worth were vacant in H1 2022.
This was from over 4.18 million square feet in the region, representing 531MW in total power capacity.
36. As of H1 2022, Dallas had 50,000 square feet of new data center constructions in the planning phase.
This would add 17.1MW to the already existing 110.5MW capacity data centers in the region. However, 26MW of that power capacity was vacant at the time.
37. 1 in 5 Los Angeles data center square feet was vacant in H1 2022.
Of the region’s 2.5 million square feet of data center locations, 500,000 remained empty in the first half of 2022.
Still, there were plans to add 750,000 extra square feet to the existing tally, bringing the 265MW capacities up by an additional 130MW.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/los-angeles-data-centers.png" alt="Los Angeles Data Centers" width="768" border="0" height="448.73636818409" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/los-angeles-data-centers-768x449.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/los-angeles-data-centers-300x175.png 300w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/los-angeles-data-centers-1024x598.png 1024w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/los-angeles-data-centers-1536x897.png 1536w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/los-angeles-data-centers.png 1999w" sizes="auto"></a>
38. In H1 2022, New Jersey data center inventory spanned 3.85 million square feet.
This landscape housed 410MW combined, with only 120,000 (17MW) vacant then. In the same period, an additional 55,000 square feet (12MW) were under construction, with plans for an additional 810,000 square feet.
39. There were plans to add 450,000 square feet to New York's data center capacity in H1 2022.
In the same period, 6500 square feet were under construction, expected to increase the capacity of the existing 1.02 million square feet (152MW) by 2MW.
40. Northern Virginia had over 41.9 million square feet of data center establishments as of H1 2022.
Another 17.675 million square feet were under construction, and plans were underway to add almost 29.5 million square feet.
Data Center Players Statistics
41. In H1 2022, Nuveen bought a 270,000 square feet data center in Hong Kong.
This purchase of a Kowloon-located data center came in at $371 million.
42. China Mobile started building a new data center on a 1 million-square-foot site in H1 2022.
The data center facility is expected to be completed by 2025.
43. As of H1 2022, BDx planned to increase its Jakarta data centers to 70MW capacity in under one year.
The Asian market player had 4 data centers in Jakarta at the time.
It also planned to upgrade the data centers to a 250MW power capacity by 2027.
44. NTT launched a 15.2 MW data center in Jakarta in H1 2022.
Furthermore, the facility is expected to carry up to 40 MW at full deployment.
45. Equinix’s SG5 data center was expanded to 83,000 square feet in H1 2022.
This was Equinix’s fifth data center in Singapore, with the expansion alone costing the firm $86 million.
46. In H1 2022, Stockland got government approval to build its 6,300 square-meter data center in North Sydney.
Speculators believed that this data center, to cost $264 million, would be leased to Amazon (for its AWS) after completion.
47. Microsoft sought to build a 122,000-square-meter data center in Western Sydney.
But it still needed to get approval from the government as of H1 2022.
The data center is expected to have a 190MW power capacity once fully operational.
48. The Princeton Digital Group started building a 100MW data center facility in Tokyo in H1 2022.
This build is in the Saitama City of Tokyo and is in partnership with Lendlease.
The data center is also expected to be ready for use by 2024.
49. In H1 2022, Gaw Capital was interested in building a 39MW capacity data center in Tokyo.
In the same period, STACK, another major player in the industry, began constructing its 36MW data center in the East of Tokyo.
50. DCI launched phase one of its data center project in Jakarta with a 15 MW power capacity in H1 2022.
This was in the East of Jakarta, and DCI plans to continue developing the data center campus till it reaches a 600MW capacity.
51. 31% of surveyed IT professionals in 2021 used Dell EMC servers in their companies’ data centers.
20% deployed HPE and Cisco servers in joint second, while IBM’s servers rounded up the top three at 10%.
| Server | % Deployment |
|---|---|
| Dell EMC | 31% |
| HPE | 20% |
| Cisco | 20% |
| IBM | 10% |
| Oracle | 5% |
| Lenovo | 5% |
| Supermicro | 4% |
| Fujitsu | 1% |
| Others | 4% |
52. In 2022, Digital Realty accounted for 773MW of Europe's 8300MW data center power capacity.
This made it the top data center operator in Europe by power capacity, followed by Equinix’s 463MW tally.
Likewise, the top ten European data center players in 2022 were responsible for 36% of the region’s data center power capacity.
53. True IDC accounted for 20% of the Hong Kong data center market in Q1 2022.
This made it the market leader, ahead of NTT Global and SUPERNAP, tying for second place (11% each). There was also a tie for third, at 9% market share each, between STT Global and CSL.
54. Digital 9 bought Ficolo (in Finland) for €135 million in H1 2022.
As of the acquisition, Ficolo had three colocation data centers.
Digital 9 Infrastructure also bought London-based Volta Data Centers for £45 million in the same period.
Data Center Market Statistics
This made it only second to the USA.
The Chinese market was dominated by China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicorn, which owned 63% of the data center landscape.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/china-data-centers.png" alt="China Data Centers" width="768" border="0" height="655.94306049822" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/china-data-centers-768x656.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/china-data-centers-300x256.png 300w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/china-data-centers-1024x874.png 1024w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/china-data-centers.png 1405w" sizes="auto"></a>
56. The Kenyan data center market clocked a $189.5 million valuation in 2021.
The market was expected to grow at a CAGR of 14.83% between 2022-2027, during which the revenue would hit $434.4 million.
57. The global data center market was valued at $220 billion by the end of 2021.
The market is expected to surge to $343.6 billion by 2030, growing at a 5.1% CAGR to reach the forecasted numbers.
58. 44% of IT pros in 2021 purchased data center equipment from OEMs for new hardware.
Another 39% sourced from value-added resellers (VARs), while 6% did not know where their data center equipment came from.
59. 11% of surveyed IT professionals in 2021 bought refurbished data center equipment for their firms.
This was split between 4% who patronized value-added resellers and another 7% that bought from a TPM.
60. The Nigerian data center market was worth an estimated $244.8 million in 2021.
Forecasts show that the market should hit $510.4 million by 2027 if it grows at a CAGR of 13%.
Data Center Revenue Statistics
61. The Australian data center market is expected to reach $5.07 billion in 2023.
Network infrastructure is predicted to be the largest segment, accounting for $2.79 billion of the revenue share.
62. The United States is expected to generate the most data center revenue ($99.97 billion) in 2023.
In contrast, the African data market is expected to pull in $5.57 billion.
63. By the end of 2023, the Americas should realize $122.3 billion in revenue from the data center market.
Like most other regions, network infrastructure ($58.01 billion projected income) will lead other segments by revenue.
64. The Asian data center market will amass $122 billion in revenue in 2023.
This projection puts it on par with the American market with just $300 million shy of its Western counterpart.
65. Network infrastructure will generate $82.5 billion in revenue for the Asian data center market in 2023.
Thus, making the highest segment by revenue share.
The entire data center market is also expected to enjoy a 5.21% CAGR between 2023 to 2027. By 2027, forecasts peg the market revenue at $149.5 billion.
66. Australia and Oceania would earn the second-least projected data center revenue ($6.22 billion) in 2023.
It would also see a slower CAGR than Africa, at 4.61%, between 2023 and 2027.
However, the market will fare better in overall revenue generated by 2027 ($7.45 billion) than in Africa.
67. In 2021, the Asia Pacific region's data center transaction volume crossed the $5 billion mark for the first time.
And it almost hit $6 billion, ending the year just about $100 million shy of that.
Likewise, this represented a 32% increase from the data center transaction volume in the region in 2020.
68. China accounted for roughly $3.5 billion of the Asian Pacific market’s data center 2021 transaction volume.
This represented over half of the region’s value, keeping China on top for the fourth year.
69. North America accounted for over 40% of the global data center revenue in 2021.
Data Center Forecast Statistics
70. The Australian data center market will be worth $6.04 billion by 2027.
This would happen from a 4.47% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2023 and 2027.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/australian-data-center-market.png" alt="Australian Data Center Market Forecast" width="768" border="0" height="409.54877438719" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/australian-data-center-market-768x410.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/australian-data-center-market-300x160.png 300w" sizes="auto"></a>
71. The African data center market is projected to surpass $7 billion by 2027.
This would represent a 5.42% CAGR from its projected $5.57 billion revenue in 2023 to hit the 2027 predictions. Likewise, network infrastructure (projected at $3 billion in 2023) is expected to be the key revenue driver in this market.
72. Data center revenue in the Americas will grow to $144.5 billion by 2027.
This represents a 4.26% CAGR between 2023 and 2027, with the USA expected to account for the region’s highest revenue share ($117.5 billion).
73. Data center operators believe software-defined power will drive the highest industry efficiency between 2022-2027.
50% of the surveyed operators backed the new power option, while 45% pitched their tent with Artificial Intelligence. In third place was multi-site resilience, voted by 38% of respondents.
The table below shows some notable expected efficiency drivers in the data center sector between 2022 and 2027.
| Expected Efficiency Driver | Voters (%) |
|---|---|
| Software-defined power | 50% |
| AI | 45% |
| Multisite resiliency | 38% |
| Direct liquid cooling | 36% |
| Multiday battery storage | 15% |
| Heat rejection into water | 10% |
| Metaverses | 8% |
Colocation Data Center Statistics
74. Kenya will realize $55 million from colocation data centers in 2027.
In another 2022 survey of 300 IT respondents, 38% cited performance and speed as the top reason to shift to colocation data centers.
75. 16% of surveyed IT pros in 2021 preferred colocation data centers to handle their workloads.
This was almost 3.5x lesser than the share of IT pros (54%) who preferred on-premise data centers instead.
76. 18% of data center operators in 2021 would use a mix of private and colocation data centers for edge computing needs.
Even though they had not implemented edge computing yet, another 40% of the surveyed IT pros believed they would use their data centers.
7% would rely entirely on colos.
77. 36% of surveyed colocation data center operators in 2022 reported rapidly increasing rack power densities from 2020-2022.
However, most (54%) believed the rack power density had only slowly increased. Another 8% thought it remained the same, while 2% saw a decrease.
78. 64% of surveyed colocation data center operators in 2022 reported no change in their power systems redundancies.
But 31% claimed an increased redundancy, while this metric reduced for 5% of the surveyed operators.
79. Over 6 in 10 colo operators marked zero cooling system redundancies in 2022.
35% of these operators boasted increased redundancies in the period, while 4% suffered a reduction.
80. Almost 3 in 10 IT respondents in 2022 preferred colocation centers for their lower costs.
The second-most respondents (37%) wanted colocation data centers’ reliability, while a third (33%) was more interested in physical data security.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/colocation-data-centers-survey.png" alt="Data Center Preferences by IT Respondents" width="768" border="0" height="577.80564263323" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/colocation-data-centers-survey-768x578.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/colocation-data-centers-survey-300x226.png 300w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/colocation-data-centers-survey-1024x770.png 1024w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/colocation-data-centers-survey-1536x1156.png 1536w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/colocation-data-centers-survey.png 1595w" sizes="auto"></a>
Data Center Downtime Statistics
81. 76% of data center operators in 2021 believed their most recent downtime could have been prevented.
They cited a need for better management, configuration, or process for the outage.
This was slightly higher than the number of data center operators who held similar opinions in 2020 (75%) and 2019 (60%).
82. 79% of surveyed data center operators in 2021 believed human error caused downtime in the past three years.
Of those who answered yes, one of the notable human error factors accounting for 18% of downtimes boiled down to insufficient staff.
83. Power issues caused 43% of outages experienced by surveyed data center owners and operators in 2021.
Power was also the leading cause in 2020, accounting for 37% of all outages.
By 2022, it increased slightly to account for 44% of all data center outages.
In second place (for 2021) was network issues (14%), tied with cooling problems and software/IT error.
84. Fire was responsible for 3% of data center downtime cases in 2021.
However, it was never an issue in 2020, with a 0% downtime report attributed to fire.
85. In 2021, 39% of data center operators and owners lost $100,000 to their major outages.
This money might have been paid in fines, compensation, or for other recovery efforts.
Furthermore, 47% spent between $100,000 – $1 million, while 15% were down $1 million after their major outage incident.
In contrast, most companies in 2019 (60%) and 20220 (45%) spent less than $100,000 after significant outages.
86. 60% of global data center operators in 2022 suffered a data center outage between 2020-2022.
This was less than the 69% and 78% who reported the same for the three years leading up to 2021 and 2020, respectively.
87. 33% of data center operators who experienced outages between 2020-2022 suffered a negligible operational impact.
Another 33% claimed the outages were minimal, while they were significant for 18% of operators. However, only 6% classed the outages they experienced as severe.
88. Most (45%) of data center operators reporting outages in 2022 spent up to $1 million in recovery costs.
This group spent $100,000 – $1 million in fines, tenant compensation, data center recovery, and other costs.
They were followed by 29% of operators who spent less than $100,000 on their outages, while 25% incurred over $1 million in costs.
Data Center Energy & Green Statistics
These data centers were also expected to have a renewable energy plan from launch to attain 100% renewability by 2030.
90. The EU green deal stipulates that all European data centers use carbon-neutral energy sources by 2050.
91. 36% of data center operators in 2021 had less than 10kW per rack.
Another 36% had 10-19kW per rack, and 16% used racks rated 20-29kW.
| Rack Density | Prevalence |
|---|---|
| <10kW | 36% |
| 10-19kW | 36% |
| 20-29kW | 16% |
| 30-39kW | 4% |
| 40-49kW | 4% |
| 49+kW | 4% |
92. 23% of organizations did not track data center water usage because they lacked the technical capacity.
The 2021 research also showed 63% who could not justify the collection of such data.
93. 17% of surveyed data centers that did not collect water usage data in 2021 had fixed-price access to the water they used.
Thus, justifying their choice of not collecting such data. For 26%, the water cost was too low to warrant usage data collection.
94. Overall, 49% of data centers in 2021 did not track their water usage.
Of those who tracked, 42% collected the water usage data for each data center they owned, and 10% aggregated water usage data across their entire data center fleet.
However, another 6% tracked water usage on a regional data center level instead of digging into each site.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-centers-water-usage.png" alt="Data Centers Water Usage" width="768" border="0" height="854.4" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-centers-water-usage-768x854.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-centers-water-usage-270x300.png 270w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-centers-water-usage-921x1024.png 921w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-centers-water-usage.png 1200w" sizes="auto"></a>
95. As of 2021, 11% of global data centers used fuel cell technology to power their operations.
Another 21% were considering it. However, it was the least considered since more data centers were considering centralized Li-ion batteries (29%) and distributed Li-ion batteries in server racks (23%).
96. Most global data centers in 2021 (47%) used centralized Li-ion batteries to power their servers.
In second place were distributed Li-ion batteries in server racks, adopted by 16% of the surveyed operators and owners.
97. As of H1 2022, US data centers represented 2% of the country’s electricity usage.
Likewise, global data centers accounted for 190.8 terawatt hours of consumed electricity by the end of 2021.
98. By the end of 2021, hyper-scale data centers used up the most energy among data center types globally.
Hyperscale data centers consumed about 90 terawatt hours of electricity annually, beating traditional and cloud (non-hyper scale) data center models.
This was also the second year that hyper-scale data centers consumed the most electricity.
99. Dallas/Fort Worth data centers in H1 2022 spent around 5.5 cents per kilowatt hour in electricity costs.
This was the highest in the region over six years, with 2016 (5.4 cents/kWh) coming the closest.
100. In Los Angeles, data center power consumption stayed at the same level for six years.
From 2016 to 2021, data center operators and owners paid about 14.5 cents per kilowatt hour in the region. The figure moved slightly to 15 cents/kWh in the first half of 2022.
101. The average data center power rate in New Jersey was 10.2 cents per kilowatt hour.
This was in H1 2021 after the power rates had ranged between 8.3-8.6 cents/kWh from 2016 to 2021.
102. Northern Californian data center power rates dropped from all-time highs over seven years.
The market saw record highs of 13.4 cents per kWh in 2017 and 2018, but H1 2022 recorded 12.8 cents per kWh. However, the 2022 costs represented an increment from 2019 (12.5c/kWh), 2020 (12.6c/kWh), and 2021 (12.7c/kWh).
103. Data center power costs in Northern Virginia stayed the same from 2016-2022.
The costs stagnated at 5.2 cents per kilowatt hour during this period.
104. 85% of global data center operators in H1 2022 collected data on their facility’s power consumption.
This slightly increased from 82% of data center operators who did the same in 2021. However, water usage tracking declined between 2021 and 2022 (51% vs. 39%).
105. Data center operators tracking their facility’s emissions increased by four percentage points between 2021 and 2022.
33% of data center operators were tracking this metric in 2021, jumping to 37% in 2022.
106. 63% of global data center operators in 2022 believed mandatory environmental sustainability metric reporting would soon be a thing.
They expected it in the next five years from the survey. Conversely, 18% did not think that would happen, while 19% had no idea.
107. Over 6 in 10 data center operators in 2022 believed they were helping reduce carbon emissions.
However, another 34% believed they (data center operators) were a part of the carbon emission problem, not the solution.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators.png" alt="Data Center Operators Statistics" width="768" border="0" height="766.72212978369" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-768x767.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-300x300.png 300w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-1024x1022.png 1024w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-150x150.png 150w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators.png 1202w" sizes="auto"></a>
108. In 2022, over 2 in 10 data center owners and operators globally believed improved cooling was crucial for environmental sustainability.
An equal 21% share also submitted that more renewable energy options would make the biggest impact.
Other considerations offered by these data center operators and owners are tabled below.
| Data Center Sustainability Consideration | % In Agreement |
|---|---|
| Improved data center cooling | 21% |
| More renewable energy purchasing options | 21% |
| Improved IT utilization | 15% |
| Stricter environmental regulatory requirements for data centers | 10% |
| Heat reuse | 9% |
| More efficient chip technology | 8% |
| Greater use of public cloud data centers | 7% |
| A significant increase in energy prices | 6% |
| Improved data center management software | 4% |
109. Canadian data centers used more green energy sources than US data centers as of H1 2022.
Hydro fuel accounted for 95% of Montreal’s data center market fuel and was used to power 24% of data center operations in Toronto. Furthermore, 8% of the energy in Toronto data centers was generated by wind, the same power source for 4% of the energy used in Montreal data centers.
110. US data centers burned more fossil fuel than renewable energy sources in H1 2022.
Below are the energy sources used in select US data center markets and how much each fuel source was used in each region.
| Region/Fuel | Natural Gas | Nuclear energy | Coal | Wind | Oil | Biogas/Biowaste | Geothermal | Hydro | Solar | Non-renewable | Renewable energy | Unspecified + Others |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta | 46% | 26% | 20% | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 8% | - |
| San Antonio & Austin | - | - | - | 40% | - | - | - | - | 32% | 28% | - | |
| Central Washington | 12% | 5% | 11% | 4% | - | - | - | 54% | - | - | - | 14% |
| Charlotte & Raleigh | 19% | 54% | 25% | - | - | - | - | 2% | - | - | - | - |
| Chicago | 40% | 34% | 20% | 3% | - | - | - | 1% | 1% | - | - | 1% |
| Dallas & Fort Worth | 52% | 8% | 17% | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 23% | - |
| Denver | 36% | - | 33% | 25% | - | - | - | 1% | 4% | - | - | 1% |
| Hillsboro | 51% | - | 19% | 12% | - | - | - | 18% | - | - | - | - |
| Houston | 51% | 8% | 17% | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 23% | - |
| Minneapolis | 23% | 28% | 23% | 15% | - | - | - | - | 3% | - | 8% | - |
| New York tri-state | 51% | 38% | - | 1% | 1% | - | - | 8% | - | - | - | 1% |
| Northern Virginia | 34% | 34% | 27% | - | 1% | - | - | - | - | - | 6% | - |
| Phoenix | 28% | 24% | 17% | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | 12% | 19% |
| Seattle | - | 5% | - | 4% | - | 1% | - | 84% | - | - | - | 6% |
| Silicon Valley | 23% | - | - | 12% | - | 3% | 6% | 46% | - | - | - | 10% |
| Southern California | 16% | 8% | - | - | - | - | - | 8% | - | - | 35% | 33% |
111. Only 5% of surveyed data center owners and operators in H1 2022 had racks greater than 50kW power densities.
Even lesser (3%) had racks spanning 40-49kW, while the majority (38%) had 10-19kW power density on each rack.
Data Center Talent Statistics
112. 73% of IT professionals in 2021 believed AI would soon take over some data center staffing roles.
This group split into 50% who thought the takeover would take longer than five years to happen. The other 23% believed AI would start taking over data center jobs in the next five years from 2021.
113. In 2021, 27% of data center operators and owners did not believe AI would take over human data center staff.
However, this dropped from 29% of operators and owners thinking the same in 2019, showing growing positive sentiment.
114. 30% of data centers in 2021 had more women staff than in 2020.
The majority (64%) reported their share of women staff remained the same, while the numbers decreased at 6% of the surveyed data centers.
115. 53% of data center operators surveyed in H1 2022 struggled with finding qualified candidates for vacant roles.
Of those with the right talent, 42% struggled to keep their staff from getting poached by competitors (in 25% of the cases) or non-competitors (17%).
Other Data Center Statistics
116. Global data centers consumed 220-320 TWh of electricity in 2021.
This was less the data center energy consumed for cryptocurrency mining in the year, which amounted to 100-140 TWh.
117. In 2021, 32% of data center operators suffered staff churn.
Of these, 12% lost their staff to non-data center competitors, while 20% lost staff to market rivals.
<a href="https://vpnalert.com/resources/data-center-statistics/" target="_blank" data-wpel-link="internal"><img src="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-staff.png" alt="Staff of Data Center Operators Statistics" width="768" border="0" height="509.45273631841" loading="lazy" fetchpriority="low" srcset="https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-staff-768x509.png 768w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-staff-300x199.png 300w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-staff-1024x679.png 1024w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-staff-1536x1019.png 1536w, https://vpnalert.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/data-center-operators-staff.png 1809w" sizes="auto"></a>
118. 47% of data center owners and operators in 2021 struggled with finding the right talent for open roles.
This was equally the case for most (36%) data center operators and owners surveyed in 2018.
119. Primary data center average rental rates were lower than for secondary data centers between 2018-2022.
A breakdown of the asking rates in these markets is tabled below.
| Period | Primary Data Center | Secondary Data Center |
|---|---|---|
| H2 2018 | $131 | $139 |
| H1 2019 | $131 | $143 |
| H2 2019 | $126 | $142 |
| H1 2020 | $121 | $134 |
| H2 2020 | $121 | $133 |
| H1 2021 | $120 | $130 |
| H2 2021 | $120 | $130 |
| H1 2022 | $128 | $133 |
Accommodating the Data Explosion
Data centers continue to be deployed at a massive scale globally to accommodate data needs. However, limitations such as power provision and moratoriums on new constructions in certain regions are stifling its explosion.
Likewise, vacancies are at a record low as data center demand mops up the available space, even before completion.
But as data centers gain more popularity, so do data-related threats and breaches grow.
So, look at our in-depth data security statistics and data breach statistics to better understand the data market landscape.
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